Company (BRT, subsequently the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation or BMT) in the Dual Contracts, adopted on March 4, 1913. The Chambers Street station was planned as a five-platform station. It would sit at the base of the Manhattan Municipal Building, a large office structure being planned for the city government. One of the conditions of an architectural design competition for the Municipal Building was that the building's internal structure could not block train tracks, stairways, or platforms. Although McKim, Mead & White were selected for the building's construction, their original plans were rejected by the city's buildings superintendent because he felt that the underlying layer of soil and sand was not strong enough to carry the building. This resulted in delays in the construction of the proposed Brooklyn loop line under the building. The BRT station opened on August 4, 1913. Originally, trains arrived from the north via either the Williamsburg Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge; the connection to the Montague Street Tunnel had not yet been completed. The loop configuration permitted trains arriving in either direction from the BMT Fourth Avenue Line in Brooklyn to pass through Chambers Street and return to Fourth Avenue without having to reverse direction. The BMT Brooklyn Loops, a track connection to the Brooklyn Bridge that would have connected to the Williamsburg Bridge tracks, was planned in the station's design, though the connection was never opened. According to a 1916 report, the connection had been completed, for just over $740,000 (), but because the BRT did not want to pay the annual rental fee that was mandated for the usage of the connection, it went unused. The overpass across William Street was closed in 1913 to make way for the proposed connection. In 1929, the overpass was reopened after it became clear that the connection would not be built. The finished portions of the tunnel to the Brooklyn Bridge led directly to wine vaults under the bridge. Service changes and station renovations Chambers Street was designed to be the BRT's Manhattan hub near City Hall; the business and population center of the city was still near Manhattan island's southern end at the time. Three years after the Chambers Street station opened, its platforms were so overcrowded that one newspaper article described them as "more dangerous during the rush hours than at the Grand Central or the Fourteenth Street Stations." However, by the mid-1920s, the subway